BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



This interpretation is accurate, but it does not probe 

 deeply. The stimulus which motivates the Babbitt group 

 is an inferiority fixation. I dislike using the term because of 

 its appropriation by the cultist Freudians; but it has a 

 validity in the interpretation of certain types of behavior 

 that is not to be denied. The inferiority complex is at the 

 bottom of most tirades against science. In the particular 

 case under discussion, the thing is acute. Nearly all present- 

 day humanists are literary critics. Now Chesterton, who is 

 sound enough when he sticks to professional items, says 

 that learning to write is so difficult that "it prevents 

 general 'education' in the customary sense of the term." 

 The writer, therefore, is a privileged man, since "he is 

 permitted to have no exact knowledge of anything in life — 

 except his craft, and not always that." The literary critic is 

 naturally in a worse case than the creative writer in this 

 respect. Moreover, the critic gets in the habit of speaking 

 with such cocksureness about literary artistry that it is 

 only natural for him to react more violently still against 

 creators of knowledge whose ways are a closed book. 



Deeper still there is a reaction common to nearly all of us. 

 It is the protest against the lowly place in the universe 

 which the still, small voice of reason gives to man. Astrono- 

 mers have shown the probable origin of the earth; geolo- 

 gists have divulged its history. Chemists have manu- 

 factured compounds which formerly were thought to be 

 characteristic products of organic processes. Biologists 

 have linked man with the humbler animals in structure, 

 function, and behavior, thus demonstrating by overwhelm- 

 ing evidence the doctrine of evolution. Geneticists, psy- 

 chologists, and physiologists have combined their evidence 

 and seriously assert that man's individuality is the neces- 

 sary product of his hereditary constitution plus physical 

 environment and experience. It is perhaps to be expected 

 that we who have created gods in our image should rebel 



[12] 



